July 3, 2013

All of Christ for all of __________________ (fill in the blank)

Guilt. It's one of the great hurdles to evangelism. I'm not talking about guilt and forgiveness in the context of the Gospel. No... that would be the very heart of evangelism - the Gospel itself. Instead, I'm thinking of the huge hurdles we build concerning actually doing evangelism. It seems that we evangelicals continually feel the need to run to extremes, to place the bar always far above our own heads. For example, if you're not evangelizing down-and-out authentically homeless people, then are you truly doing evangelism?

How foolish we are, to manufacture guilt that does not exist and allow it to hold us back from reaching out to the very real people who do exist in our circle of influence. "You mean, I could actually talk to the empty-nester about the Gospel over a cup of coffee?" Yup. That's what I mean.